CS 391L: Machine Learning Introduction Raymond J. Mooney University of Texas at Austin

What is Learning? Herbert Simon: “Learning is any process by which a system improves performance from experience.” What is the task? Classification Problem solving / planning / control

Classification Assign object/event to one of a given finite set of categories. Medical diagnosis Credit card applications or transactions Fraud detection in e-commerce Worm detection in network packets Spam filtering in email Recommended articles in a newspaper Recommended books, movies, music, or jokes Financial investments DNA sequences Spoken words Handwritten letters Astronomical images

Problem Solving / Planning / Control Performing actions in an environment in order to achieve a goal. Solving calculus problems Playing checkers, chess, or backgammon Balancing a pole Driving a car or a jeep Flying a plane, helicopter, or rocket Controlling an elevator Controlling a character in a video game Controlling a mobile robot

Measuring Performance Classification Accuracy Solution correctness Solution quality (length, efficiency) Speed of performance

Why Study Machine Learning? Engineering Better Computing Systems Develop systems that are too difficult/expensive to construct manually because they require specific detailed skills or knowledge tuned to a specific task (knowledge engineering bottleneck). Develop systems that can automatically adapt and customize themselves to individual users. Personalized news or mail filter Personalized tutoring Discover new knowledge from large databases (data mining). Market basket analysis (e.g. diapers and beer) Medical text mining (e.g. migraines to calcium channel blockers to magnesium)

Why Study Machine Learning? Cognitive Science Computational studies of learning may help us understand learning in humans and other biological organisms. Hebbian neural learning “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” Human’s relative difficulty of learning disjunctive concepts vs. conjunctive ones. Power law of practice log(perf. time) log(# training trials)

Why Study Machine Learning? The Time is Ripe Many basic effective and efficient algorithms available. Large amounts of on-line data available. Large amounts of computational resources available.

Related Disciplines Artificial Intelligence Data Mining Probability and Statistics Information theory Numerical optimization Computational complexity theory Control theory (adaptive) Psychology (developmental, cognitive) Neurobiology Linguistics Philosophy

Defining the Learning Task Improve on task, T, with respect to performance metric, P, based on experience, E. T: Playing checkers P: Percentage of games won against an arbitrary opponent E: Playing practice games against itself T: Recognizing hand-written words P: Percentage of words correctly classified E: Database of human-labeled images of handwritten words T: Driving on four-lane highways using vision sensors P: Average distance traveled before a human-judged error E: A sequence of images and steering commands recorded while observing a human driver. T: Categorize email messages as spam or legitimate. P: Percentage of email messages correctly classified. E: Database of emails, some with human-given labels

Designing a Learning System Choose the training experience Choose exactly what is too be learned, i.e. the target function. Choose how to represent the target function. Choose a learning algorithm to infer the target function from the experience. Learner Environment/ Experience Knowledge Performance Element

Sample Learning Problem Learn to play checkers from self-play We will develop an approach analogous to that used in the first machine learning system developed by Arthur Samuels at IBM in 1959.

Training Experience Direct experience: Given sample input and output pairs for a useful target function. Checker boards labeled with the correct move, e.g. extracted from record of expert play Indirect experience: Given feedback which is not direct I/O pairs for a useful target function. Potentially arbitrary sequences of game moves and their final game results. Credit/Blame Assignment Problem: How to assign credit blame to individual moves given only indirect feedback?

Source of Training Data Provided random examples outside of the learner’s control. Negative examples available or only positive? Good training examples selected by a “benevolent teacher.” “Near miss” examples Learner can query an oracle about class of an unlabeled example in the environment. Learner can construct an arbitrary example and query an oracle for its label. Learner can design and run experiments directly in the environment without any human guidance.

Training vs. Test Distribution Generally assume that the training and test examples are independently drawn from the same overall distribution of data. IID: Independently and identically distributed If examples are not independent, requires collective classification. If test distribution is different, requires transfer learning.

Choosing a Target Function What function is to be learned and how will it be used by the performance system? For checkers, assume we are given a function for generating the legal moves for a given board position and want to decide the best move. Could learn a function: ChooseMove(board, legal-moves) → best-move Or could learn an evaluation function, V(board) → R, that gives each board position a score for how favorable it is. V can be used to pick a move by applying each legal move, scoring the resulting board position, and choosing the move that results in the highest scoring board position.

Ideal Definition of V(b) If b is a final winning board, then V(b) = 100 If b is a final losing board, then V(b) = –100 If b is a final draw board, then V(b) = 0 Otherwise, then V(b) = V(b´), where b´ is the highest scoring final board position that is achieved starting from b and playing optimally until the end of the game (assuming the opponent plays optimally as well). Can be computed using complete mini-max search of the finite game tree.

Approximating V(b) Computing V(b) is intractable since it involves searching the complete exponential game tree. Therefore, this definition is said to be non-operational. An operational definition can be computed in reasonable (polynomial) time. Need to learn an operational approximation to the ideal evaluation function.

Representing the Target Function Target function can be represented in many ways: lookup table, symbolic rules, numerical function, neural network. There is a trade-off between the expressiveness of a representation and the ease of learning. The more expressive a representation, the better it will be at approximating an arbitrary function; however, the more examples will be needed to learn an accurate function.

Linear Function for Representing V(b) In checkers, use a linear approximation of the evaluation function. bp(b): number of black pieces on board b rp(b): number of red pieces on board b bk(b): number of black kings on board b rk(b): number of red kings on board b bt(b): number of black pieces threatened (i.e. which can be immediately taken by red on its next turn) rt(b): number of red pieces threatened

Obtaining Training Values Direct supervision may be available for the target function. < <bp=3,rp=0,bk=1,rk=0,bt=0,rt=0>, 100> (win for black) With indirect feedback, training values can be estimated using temporal difference learning (used in reinforcement learning where supervision is delayed reward).

Temporal Difference Learning Estimate training values for intermediate (non-terminal) board positions by the estimated value of their successor in an actual game trace. where successor(b) is the next board position where it is the program’s move in actual play. Values towards the end of the game are initially more accurate and continued training slowly “backs up” accurate values to earlier board positions.

Learning Algorithm Uses training values for the target function to induce a hypothesized definition that fits these examples and hopefully generalizes to unseen examples. In statistics, learning to approximate a continuous function is called regression. Attempts to minimize some measure of error (loss function) such as mean squared error:

Least Mean Squares (LMS) Algorithm A gradient descent algorithm that incrementally updates the weights of a linear function in an attempt to minimize the mean squared error Until weights converge : For each training example b do : 1) Compute the absolute error : 2) For each board feature, fi, update its weight, wi : for some small constant (learning rate) c

LMS Discussion Intuitively, LMS executes the following rules: If the output for an example is correct, make no change. If the output is too high, lower the weights proportional to the values of their corresponding features, so the overall output decreases If the output is too low, increase the weights proportional to the values of their corresponding features, so the overall output increases. Under the proper weak assumptions, LMS can be proven to eventetually converge to a set of weights that minimizes the mean squared error.

Lessons Learned about Learning Learning can be viewed as using direct or indirect experience to approximate a chosen target function. Function approximation can be viewed as a search through a space of hypotheses (representations of functions) for one that best fits a set of training data. Different learning methods assume different hypothesis spaces (representation languages) and/or employ different search techniques.

Various Function Representations Numerical functions Linear regression Neural networks Support vector machines Symbolic functions Decision trees Rules in propositional logic Rules in first-order predicate logic Instance-based functions Nearest-neighbor Case-based Probabilistic Graphical Models Naïve Bayes Bayesian networks Hidden-Markov Models (HMMs) Probabilistic Context Free Grammars (PCFGs) Markov networks

Various Search Algorithms Gradient descent Perceptron Backpropagation Dynamic Programming HMM Learning PCFG Learning Divide and Conquer Decision tree induction Rule learning Evolutionary Computation Genetic Algorithms (GAs) Genetic Programming (GP) Neuro-evolution

Evaluation of Learning Systems Experimental Conduct controlled cross-validation experiments to compare various methods on a variety of benchmark datasets. Gather data on their performance, e.g. test accuracy, training-time, testing-time. Analyze differences for statistical significance. Theoretical Analyze algorithms mathematically and prove theorems about their: Computational complexity Ability to fit training data Sample complexity (number of training examples needed to learn an accurate function)

History of Machine Learning Samuel’s checker player Selfridge’s Pandemonium 1960s: Neural networks: Perceptron Pattern recognition Learning in the limit theory Minsky and Papert prove limitations of Perceptron 1970s: Symbolic concept induction Winston’s arch learner Expert systems and the knowledge acquisition bottleneck Quinlan’s ID3 Michalski’s AQ and soybean diagnosis Scientific discovery with BACON Mathematical discovery with AM

History of Machine Learning (cont.) Advanced decision tree and rule learning Explanation-based Learning (EBL) Learning and planning and problem solving Utility problem Analogy Cognitive architectures Resurgence of neural networks (connectionism, backpropagation) Valiant’s PAC Learning Theory Focus on experimental methodology 1990s Data mining Adaptive software agents and web applications Text learning Reinforcement learning (RL) Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) Ensembles: Bagging, Boosting, and Stacking Bayes Net learning

History of Machine Learning (cont.) Support vector machines Kernel methods Graphical models Statistical relational learning Transfer learning Sequence labeling Collective classification and structured outputs Computer Systems Applications Compilers Debugging Graphics Security (intrusion, virus, and worm detection) E mail management Personalized assistants that learn Learning in robotics and vision